GOLF: Teesside father and son produce exciting Talon training aid

“If you set up correctly, there’s a good chance you’ll hit a reasonable shot, even if you make a mediocre swing. If you set up to the ball poorly, you’ll hit a lousy shot even if you make the greatest swing in the world.” – Jack Nicklaus.

EVERY golfer has been there. Whether you are a first-timer standing over the ball, a mid-range handicapper teeing off in a club competition or a Tour player seeking a climb up the rankings, everyone questions their set-up.

Over the last few years a father and son combination from Teesside have worked on a unique addition to the sport’s technology and a way to help with those mind games – and they feel they have cracked it.

Loading article content

Matt and Paul Hulbert’s brainchild is the Talon … a revolutionary, digital training aid that delivers real-time visual feedback on stance, set-up and angles of address when standing over the ball.

“It’s basically a digital spirit level for set up and goes on the end of the club with a digital display, telling you spine angles, shaft angles, and the rotation of club face,” explained Matt.

“We looked at products and we wanted to look at something real-time. What we produce is a golfer’s own unique Ojee angle – the name we have given to it – and then they can go away and use that every time.

“It’s finding that consistency, that’s a huge part of the game and that’s what the Talon does because you know when you instantly know when you are addressing the ball how you should be because it shows you.”

Matt was introduced to golf by his father when he was younger and they were members at Saltburn Golf Club together.

Paul, 69, is an architect and keen golfer, while Matt gained a masters in product design at Teesside University.

Design clearly runs in the family and they wanted to come up with their own invention, so they got their heads together a few years ago and came up with the Talon – and they are now onto the Talon Mk2 after looking and listening to ways of how it could be improved.

“The idea came about pretty quickly really,” said Matt, who produces the Talon in a studio in Middlesbrough. “We went to a David Leadbetter session once a few years ago and had a 3D scan of what we were doing. We wanted to replicate that somehow, but I said it had already been done.

“I noticed a quote from Jack Nicklaus about hitting the ball in the same way. It’s about 50 per cent mental, 40 per cent the set-up and ten per cent the swing. I thought who knows what the spine angle is? Nobody knows, so that’s where it came from really.

“I had the idea we could use accelerometers to measure angles and within two weeks we had a prototype – four months after that we were at the London Golf Show.

“We wanted to crowd fund it initially, so did a video on crowd-funding tool Indiegogo, where people could pre-order it. We wanted to raise £20,000 and got £30,000, we sold 178 in 20 diff countries to test the water. We raised what was required and that confirmed to us that what we were trying to do was desirable.”

Matt, 32, has helped design numerous products working with the E3 design company but was keen to have a crack at designing something for himself and his dad – and in golf.

And he thinks the Talon Mk2 – which he claims can be a teaching pro’s best friend as well as helping the amateur golfer – is something completely different.

“The golf market is so saturated, there’s hundreds of things out every day,” said Matt. “The good thing is there is no real competition for this. Nobody thinks about set up, but we have seen people drop five shots off their game in six months by using it and getting a consistency in setting up.”

The 178 consumers who initially got involved with the crowd-funding for the Talon are those the Hulberts have used to improve it and produce the second version of it. Now it is hoped the innovative device, which provides everyone with an Ojee Angle, will develop the quality of their game.

Matt said: “What we found is that education was a huge part, it’s OK if you can see how you stand but you need to know how to stand. The Ojee Angle is the relationship between spine and club shaft and we have determined that’s the most critical thing – and the TALON is the tool to measure that.

“There is going to be a further study carried out for us by the University of Notre Dame in Australia, by Chris Joyce who is from Middlesbrough by coincidence.

“He is going to do a four month study into the science behind the angle and if it proves to be true then we will have the device produced on a bigger scale.

“It’s just available online at the moment, we will be trying to get a load of teaching pros to use it. We have already spoken to England Golf and they are looking at having Talon representatives.

“The aim then will be to start the Ojee Academy, and we will have teaching pros who will feed back what they have found and develop from there. Feedback is good.”

Ipsoregulated

This website and associated newspapers adhere to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about the editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then please contact the editor here. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact IPSO here